The Future of Search: 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors&nbspReleased

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Every two years, Moz surveys over 100 top industry professionals to compile our biennial Search Engine Ranking Factors. For 2013, we've supplemented the survey with real-world correlation data from a scientific examination of over 17,000 keyword search results by Dr. Matt Peters and his data science team.

We've released some of the 2013 data previously, but not the full set until now. So with great pleasure, I present the complete results of this year's survey and correlation data:

Why do we call it ranking factors?

Google claims to use over 200 signals in its search algorithm. While we don't know what exactly these signals are, it's helpful to examine high-ranking pages so that we can begin to understand the characteristic of pages search engines like to reward. This can give us a "hint" as to the ranking factors the search engines actually use.

For example, if the correlation data shows us that high-ranking pages are associated with a high number of external backlinks, we might guess that backlinks are still an important part of Google's algorithm.

This doesn't mean sharing on Google+ isn't important, but does tell us we should pay closer attention to try to understand why pages with a lot of +1's are also pages that tend to rank higher in search results.

This post and chart by Rand Fishkin helps illustrate the difference between correlation and causation.

Comparing correlation metrics

This year's Ranking Factors contains an interactive chart that allows you to compare different categories of correlations against each other, such as in this snippet comparing page-level link metrics (yellow) to domain-level link metrics (blue).

By comparing the data, we find that high-ranking URLs are more highly correlated with page-level link metrics than general domain-level link metrics.

What's really incredible about this view is that Page Authority is the most highly correlated metric in this year's study at 0.39, making it one of the most highly correlated SEO metrics we've ever observed.

On-page keyword usage vs. page-level anchor text

While the correlation with on-page keyword usage has declined over the years, the correlations with page-level anchor text remain as strong as ever. For instance, the number of root domains linking to the page with partial match anchor text has a 0.29 correlation.

Social correlations vs. link metric correlations

Social metrics have also gained a lot of attention in past years. Do they still correlate well with higher rankings? This chart compares social metric correlations with traditional link correlations.

Here we see social metric correlations almost equal with link metric correlations. This almost perfectly illustrates the need to not jump to conclusions with correlation data, for while we suspect Google may use social data in its search algorithm, it's also true that pages that get a large number of social shares also tend to earn a high number of links.

Just because a metric is highly correlated, doesn't mean Google uses that metric directly.

The future of search: 128 industry experts lead the way

Raw data only gets you so far. Often, the observations and experience from those on the ground goes much farther when working toward search marketing success.

This year, we invited over 100 industry experts to weigh in on how they see search engines working, what tactics are successful, and what the future might hold.

We asked each of our contributors about the future of search. The chart below shows where our experts think things are headed.

Real world, in-depth insight

We also asked each expert to weigh in on each survey question. Here are a few responses from the Future of Search question.

Dev Basu
"Social signals from Google+ will become more and more relevant over the next 12 months. Eventually Google+ will take equal, if not more, prominence than Facebook due to its position at the cross-section of search and social."

Laura Lippay
"Some of the research papers from universities and/or search engines have shown them testing things like how long the window is in focus, scrolling on a page, printing from a page, and-what I think is the most interesting one (used for testing a page's credibility)-automating the process of identifying topical experts and giving weight to the pages they visit."

Todd Malicoat
"Don't believe the hype of social and G+. They will increase in importance, but certainly not replace more traditional offsite factors. Inbound links and offsite equity will continue to be highly influential to search relevance when validated by other factors. Expect these offsite equity trust and authority factors to maintain a large portion of the importance that they've always held as the foundation of the Google algorithm."

Looking at how relatively well PA correlates with rankings I wonder if Moz has considered opening up how PA/DA is calculated - if sharing exact weightings is not possible than maybe at least main components?

It's a machine-learning based algorithm that combines many other metrics. Cyrus' sausage analogy is actually a pretty good one, because even we don't know exactly what's in PA to what extent each time the algo re-runs (the raw elements are all the other metrics you see in the Mozscape index/API).

Chrome browser has only 17.76% market share at this time (source: http://tnw.co/1crEZq8), and from those users I'm sure many don't use the bookmarks feature - so I don't think this will be accurate as ranking factor.

At last! What we'e been anticipating all year! Google+ edging out Facebook and Twitter could be construed by many as a bit of muscle-flexing by Google. It would be rather nice to know whether correlation is implying causation here...

But I've had a play with the chart (hours of fun, I'd recommend it to anyone) and there don't seem to be any domain-level social metrics. Is that right, or am I being blind?

All social metrics used in the study were page-level, based on the available data from the major social providers. For example, it's easy to see how many Tweets and +1s this page has (712 and 370 at the time of this comment) but it's hard to aggregate these across a domain.

Yep, my thoughts exactly. I'm sure it's a non-trivial task from a data analysis perspective, but I think an incredibly interesting view into the Hummingbird algo would be to re-run the data (old algo vs Hummingbird) and see if any of the correlation levels fluctuate to a meaningful extent.

Thanks Russ. To be clear and transparent for everyone, this data IS pre-Hummingbird. While we don't think the data is likely significantly changed since then, we do plan on running correlation studies more regularly.

I was glad to see and totally agree with what Todd Malicoat had said. Sure, Google may try to push for more relevance with social and especially G+; but I think they know that if they keep raising the importance of G+ to the SERPs, it's just going to be exploited.

To be honest, the majority of G+ users that I've seen are SEOs and marketing coordinators; if I've seen this then Google definitely has, and I doubt they'll put much more effort into giving it more ranking power until something happens where real users (i.e. not SEOs/Marketers or people that were forced to sign up for it to use Google Play or some other Google service) are the majority and actually using G+.

Now, I agree that we should be prepared for when/if this takes effect. But until that happens, I think (along with Todd) that we should "Expect these offsite equity trust and authority factors to maintain a large portion of the importance that they've always held as the foundation of the Google algorithm.", and play the game with the known facts and guidance Google has given us.

I'd like to hear what others think, I'm totally open to new/different ideas and perspectives!

I have a YouMoz post still in review that offers a theory about the causal link between social signals and rank. I don't think it's just that content that draws likes also draws links - I've seen cases where content that didn't draw links and was solely promoted via social still ranked well. I agree that Google is not using the social signals directly as part of their 200+ ranking factors. There has to be something else to it - the fact that the correlation with +1's is higher than the correlation with unique C-blocks linking to the site is just too strong to be ignored (or go unexplained).

Awesome!! I'm eager to comb through the whole methodology/data! Just in time for Hummingbird, as some other users pointed out, but also just in time for my Moz Analytics invite to arrive, haha! It will be nice using both the white paper and the new tool set to do some research of my own.

It's interesting to see that there is an anticipated decrease in the importance of exact match domains, though I'm wondering how much PMDs will still hold weight as a ranking factor. This seems to be something I run into when trying to discover why sites with lower quality content, fewer back links, or that are just generally less-optimized will rank above sites that are well-optimized with great content and quality links: The main clue tends to include a PMD.

The quotes about the future of search are interesting! "Social signals from Google+ will become more and more relevant over the next 12 months," and "Don't believe the hype of social and G+." in quick succession made me laugh. Only in SEO is their such robust debate and contradiction about strategies and their application!

In our office, we joke that nearly every question in SEO can be answered with "Yes and No." In Search Engine Land's recent interview with Google about the Hummingbird algorithm, Danny Sullivan used our line! ("The new engine is using old parts? Yes. And no.")

Nice summary Cyrus. Its interesting to see the divergence of the high correlation data from inbound links/anchor text (high) conflicts with the expert opinions on influence of anchor text in external links is relatively low where most say the influence of these will decrease or stay the same.

Any ideas why the results of the study would differ so greatly from predictions of the experts other than the fact that the study data represents the past/present and the experts are looking forward?

I think what we see in the survey data is perceived influence of anchor text influence decreasing, which has certainly been true post-Penguin. What's great about comparing this with real-world data is we can see while the decrease of certain signals in edge cases (like Penguin) doesn't necessarily mean that signal's influence (or correlation) hasn't decreased across the more broad spectrum, and we should still pay attention to it.

Awesome data! I'm especially glad about the predictions chart (authorship metrics, usability/design of content, usage data, as well as topic modeling becoming more important is very exciting looking from where Google stands now.)

If Laura Lippay's prediction is even remotely close to what is going to happen, then SEO is becoming even more interesting and fascinating. Especially the part with topical experts behavior.

Definitely interesting to see where peopel thought it might go... and I'm overly happy people chose the importance of user experience on a page. Though, i think maybe you're all giving Google too much credit. I'll be surprised if they go the morally correct way.

What's really surprising is how much things don't change. When Google releases a major update they tend to make statements like "2% of all search queries will be effected." What's easy to forget is that the basics of the core algorythm likely remain very much intact.

SEO and ranking are second after paid ads, no more real, useful search results, the results you will get in the first couple of pages will be there because they are paid and not because is what really gives you an answer to your query. The instant search, useless. If you type a term that can be related to ecommerce, even if you are not shopping, you will get results from Amazon, plus the top 3 ecommerce sites paying for ads on the top or the right side, organic is just a way to make sure those ads are "clicked" and charged for. The encrypted search is just a very blunt way to stop you from knowing that people do not click ads anymore, people in 2013 know where to go when they want to shop and since google is not allowed to "mix" organic with paid without clearly labeling it, they simply created the encrypted search excuse so we don't know that the people coming to your site came ONLY from "organic" so this way they will match your ads and the organic ranking and in between, they will "protect" your searches so that google can charge organic clicks as if they were coming from paid. SEO is not dead but it exist only after the 3rd page.

I also wanted to ask if you know of any articles that can show how often google comes to a site and really indexes and updates the pages of a site. I remember that google used to brag about having so many billion pages indexed, no today and anyway, who needs trillions of pages? A few million will do it if search was a real honest service as it was 10 years ago. Google find out that indexing and storing pages was incredibly costly, so now they come and really index a site every 6 to 8 months. If you have more than one site, add a few new pages and you will see that they may show a day or two later but not all and only for limited time, serving new pages is not top priority for google. Google is to me, the less useful search engine in the world, lazy to index, tricky to retailers and totally irrelevant to most people. I use ask.com or I just go directly to niche sites. Remember folks, SEO lives only after th3 3rd page.

thank for sharing your valuable research with us. I like your work in this topic and i think this information is very helpful for the marketer to maintaining our ranking on the top and your describing of this topic with the picture is very nice thought, from this people easily understand our view.

One thing not mentioned in here - Local. Is this somehow off topic? After Google Local hit, I had a few client rankings tank in the larger markets where we'd carved out some pretty good results, with the apparent reason being results quickly became much more geographically coordinated. Instead of ranking county wide, returns became city wide, even where cities blend into each other so well in reality that you can't tell where one stops and the next starts. Locally based businesses often don't need to rank globally - showing up as a cutting edge hair salon for searches out of Dallas doesn't add much bottom line for a walk in shop in Seattle. Showing up in results from Seattle matter a lot if your physical address is the next town over, all within the same greater metropolitan area. So, the strategies are somewhat different when your focus is ranking close to home while trying to increase that distance within limits. Or are they? (yes and no!?) Where does proximity fit as a factor of influence?

I also think that the with the passage of time things are going to change day by day and your study also reveal the same fact. Ranking factors are not same as the traditional ones rather than a lot of other factors are evolving much and causing their impact upon them.

Great post! Google ranking is the dream and nightmer of every ecommerce!

Talking about ranking factor, i'd like to give a tip you don't usually find correlated to the main topic of this post: feedbacks collection.

Having reviews published on your website increase constantly your UGC (User-Generated Content) which is vital for SEO, and good SEO performances make you rank quickly on Google (AdWards, Shopping, Search).

It stands to reason that there are other positive collateral effects as: the increase of the CTR (Click-Through-Rate), the decrease of PPC, the activation of Google seller ratings extension, the boost the conversion rate and the Google five golden stars!

The feedback collection can be tricky, my advice is to commit this task to professionals of this field. Not all the companies are on the same level, i know that at the moment the best on the market are eKomi and Bazaarvoice.

When we say "Social Signals", what exactly are we talking about? What are the social signals which will help SEO?

- Number of people who have Liked/Shared/+1'd a specific URL?

- Number of people who have Liked/Followed your Facebook/Google+, etc pages. (If this is a factor, does it help to have a box similar to the one found on this page (under the words "social connection"), which semi-officially links a website to a Facebook page?

-Number of times that your url was mentioned by others in social media?

-Anything else?

I've searched far and wide for an answer to this and haven't found a good answer.

The majority of seo boost of social signals is to freshness score. So it's value is not as huge when competing for a less than fresh keyword. Social is shiny but is no substitute for accurate citations, quality link profile, and awesome content.

Dear Cyrus, Very useful research about the Search Engine Ranking Factors for future 2013 – 14. The post juice is – Digital Internet Marketing will be depends on Social signals included high authority genuine back links with an attractive content. Thanks for share this on MOZ, It will assist a lot to Digital Marketing Business Entrepreneur’s.

Awesome Article, I am egger to work with this methodologies, it will be really nice information share today. I really enjoy this post and Page Level Authority and Domain level authority and other cluster are really interesting data graphically. I am very much exciting looking from where Google stands now

What its is a little bit unlcear (or just a different result) is that in the previous Whiteboard Friday about Clusters of Ranking Algorithms Rand gave us an insight about the Domain Level Link Authority Features (20.94%) Vs Page Level LinkAuthority Features (19.15%) base on a survey of 128 great SEOs.

Now we see that PA Link features (0.39) is higher than DA Link Features (0.27)

This is really a fascinating question. We've seen the correlation of both PA and DA fluxuate over the years, and this may sometimes indicate if Google is favoring domain-based or page-based signals, but it's really hard to say.

Yes it is hard really. We must keep studying this correlation, and keep trying to understand if a given page, is more valuable, for example, by getting low authority links from a strong Domain with high DA, or high authoritative pages coming from bad domains. I'd say the second one is better, but is hard to make this a statement.

Right and I do not remember but I read a tweet from some where he mentioned some Google Employee name who mentioned that Google plus do not play role in ranking.
Does Google plus plays a role in ranking,If so any proven results?
Google authorship is one other thing?Is it a ranking factor or not?

Getting my face to appear next to my posts in search was a good use of my time.

Seeing how high authorship is ranking shows that people want credible info from reliable sources. And if you've got the nerve to put your mug up, well, you're doing more than most. Even if you've written something searchers might not be totally interested in, seeing your face just might be all it take for them to take a look.